


Something of His Own

by sunryder



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: The Dwarf's voice was so deep and soothing that Bilbo might have asked the speaker to sit beside him and just speak stories. At least, until he looked at the speaker properly. Even in his melancholy, Bilbo’s body didn’t know quite what to do with a broad Dwarf whose eyes were so blue they glinted nearly as silver as the hair at his temples.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 19
Kudos: 196
Collections: 2021 Prompt Calendar





	Something of His Own

Adalgrim meant for the trip to Bree to be a shopping excursion. “Don’t worry, Grandfather,” he’d said, “we won’t get up to any trouble. But Bilbo can’t go on sitting in that house surrounded by his parent’s things! He needs to get away from home, feel the sun on his face, and the earth between his toes, and buy a thing or two that will just be _his_ , so he’s not just surrounded by memories of his parents.”

Grandfather Gerontius had listened to Adalgrim, as he always did, but Elvish paintings and Mannish crockery didn’t lift Bilbo’s spirits.

Bilbo was… melancholy. (Not _wallowing_ , no matter what Adalgrim said. And what was wrong with that if he was? His parents had passed within six months of one another, illness and heartsickness claiming them in turn. If that wasn’t just cause to wallow, what was?)

Bless his heart, Adalgrim tried. He was full of: “This book is a translation of Beren and Luthien!” and “Isn’t this weaving exquisite?” and “I’ve never heard of this herb before!” but nothing broke through Bilbo’s haze.

Two days into their trip to Bree, Bilbo sent Adalgrim off alone to conduct a bit of business on their grandfather’s behalf. Dear Adalgrim looked terribly grateful at a moment of peace – then horribly guilty at his gratitude. “Off with you, Grim. I’ll just have a bit of supper in our room then go straight to bed.”

“Bil…”

“Your business discussions don’t need the bother of my company tonight.

“Your company is never a bother, Bilbo.”

Bilbo didn’t quite have the energy to snort at the lie. “Thank you, Grim. But still, I’ll be staying here.”

“Promise me that you’ll at least eat dinner downstairs.”

“Grim, I don’t—”

“Or have a drink before you settle in for dinner. And have them draw you a bath to break up the evening.”

Since Bilbo’s dear cousin wouldn’t leave his side otherwise, Bilbo promised, and melancholic or not, Bilbo was not the sort to break a promise. He didn’t feel much like eating – a terrible state for a Hobbit – but he went downstairs and ordered a small plate that he picked over and a mug of ale that he twisted more than drank.

Bilbo didn’t know quite how long he’d been sitting there staring at nothing when someone stepped through the wall of melancholy shielding him from the other patrons and sat down beside him. “Would you like company in your grief or is your solitude soothing?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Only to someone well acquainted with grief. I remember many times when all I wanted was a bit of peace to myself but could never find it. I wouldn’t want to impose upon you if that’s what you’re looking for. Although, I don’t think it is.”

The voice was so deep and soothing on its own that Bilbo might have asked the speaker to sit beside him and just speak stories. At least, that was all Bilbo wanted until he looked at the speaker properly. Even in his melancholy, Bilbo’s body didn’t know quite what to do with a broad Dwarf whose eyes were so blue they glinted nearly as silver as the hair at his temples.

“What makes you suspect that?” Bilbo croaked.

“No one would come sit in a bar if they were truly looking for solitude.”

Bilbo stumbled out the truth. “I promised my cousin I would leave the room while he went to handle business.”

“Tell me about him.” The Dwarf asked as he gestured to the barkeep for a mug of his own. The Dwarf… well, it seemed he meant to stay. Quite against his better sense, Bilbo told the Dwarf everything. (“Thorin, Master Hobbit,” “Bilbo, please.” Bilbo felt Thorin’s, “Bilbo,” in his belly.)

Bilbo told the story sideways, twisting back and forth as some forgotten details were remembered. Adalgrim and business turned into a bath – the thought of one now made Bilbo blush, which Thorin’s smirk seemed to enjoy – then Bilbo went to furniture he couldn’t buy because his mother despised his taste, to the Took and Baggins clans putting aside their never-ending disdain in the fear that Bilbo would fade as his mother did since he had no siblings, spouse, or children to keep him going. “Not that having a child did much to prolong my mother’s life.”

Thorin pressed against Bilbo’s side. “Do you mean that?”

“No.” Bilbo sighed. “But I’m told that anger is a natural part of the grieving process. Though, telling myself that doesn’t make me feel any less like a wretch every time I get angry.”

“I’m still angry at my family.” Instead of looking at Bilbo as he admitted it, Thorin picked apart the crust of overcooked bread left on his plate. “It’s been decades and the only ones I don’t still want to yell at are my mother and grandmother. That’s only because they died in a natural disaster through no fault of their own. My grandfather, father, and brother, they all died for pride.”

“Did they really?” Bilbo leaned back against Thorin and asked in the same soft, careful tone the Dwarf had used.

“My grandfather and father, yes. My younger brother… he didn’t want to be left behind while the rest of us went to war. Didn’t want to be the one left at home to hear that the rest of us had fallen. He was so young, and certain that he would come out a hero in the way that only the young are.”

“Hopefully only the young. There are plenty of elderly Hobbits far too proud of themselves so they refuse to learn better.”

“It was reckless of him, and I’ve had to walk this earth without him for a hundred years because of it.”

“You miss him. That’s not the same thing as being angry with him.”

“Not him, but still with my father and grandfather for leaving me in charge of… our family at so young an age and so unprepared for the task.”

“You have some family left, then?”

“Aye, a sister and two sister-sons. Both small Dwarflings that are my pride and joy.”

Bilbo plucked the shredded bread from Thorin’s hand and interwove their fingers. “Tell me about them.”

Thorin told Bilbo about losing his brother-in-law to a mining accident when his sister was pregnant, about the agony of having to tell little Fili that his father was gone, and taking baby Kili into his arms for the first time and knowing he would be the only father this babe would ever know. Bilbo slid his stool next to Thorin’s, all but climbing in the Dwarf’s lap. “Tell me something happy.”

Thorin blinked for a long moment before he tore his eyes away from the skin of Bilbo’s calf dangling next to his own thick boot. “All right.” Thorin cleared his throat. “When I left Ered Luin, the boys were trying to steal a pie someone had left out on their windowsill.”

“Are you certain your nephews aren’t Hobbits? That is a trusted, Hobbitish right of passage.” Thorin laughed, deep and wonderful.

“Were you more successful in your thievery attempts than my nephews?”

“Oh yes, scourge of the Shire, I was. No baked good was safe. It got to the point that they started teaching me to bake just to save themselves the trouble of trying to mount a proper defense.”

Thorin laughed again and Bilbo accepted that the sound of Thorin’s laughter was going to live in his dreams until the end of time. It took Bilbo a long moment to realize that they had stopped speaking and now were just staring at one another, thighs pressed together and fingers interwoven.

Life was short and full of painful melancholy, so Bilbo summoned up his courage and said, “I can think of something else I might do just as well.”

Bilbo could feel his hot blush against Thorin’s warm palm as the Dwarf leaned in for a long, slow kiss. Bilbo would say it was Hobbitishly sweet, but there was something about the scratch of Thorin’s beard and the breadth of Thorin’s hands that made Bilbo’s blood rush faster than full sex ever had before.

They pulled back before they crossed too far beyond the line of what was acceptable in public. Bilbo pressed his forehead to Thorin’s and murmured against dry lips, “Come upstairs with me.”

“Do Hobbits permit such a thing?”

“Tooks do, and I am Took enough.”

“Be certain that this is not simply grief, Bilbo. I do not think I could bear it if you regretted me in the morning.”

“I’ve felt more alive in this conversation then I have since my father fell ill. Maybe… maybe since I was child chasing fireflies and Elves through the forest. I may regret many things about my life, Thorin, but never you.”

Thorin pressed a deceptively soft kiss to Bilbo’s lips, all but humming with desire behind the touch. “Let me teach you to chase Dwarves instead.” He tugged Bilbo off his stool, but let Bilbo lead the way up the stairs to his room, keeping their hands intertwined all the while.

@@@@@

Bilbo woke in a dream. Last night, a beautiful Dwarf had let him ramble out his problems, taken Bilbo to bed so well he shook, and now was wrapped around Bilbo like a second blanket. The dream was so perfect that it took Bilbo several long minutes to realize he was properly hungry for the first time since his father had fallen ill.

Bilbo would have happily stayed there for another hour, sunlight warming his feet and his head pillowed on a surprisingly comfortable bicep, but his stomach betrayed him with a grumble that could have woken the dead. Thorin snorted a laugh against the back of Bilbo’s head and got elbowed in the stomach for his trouble.

“I’m a Hobbit. We slept so late it must be near elevenses.”

“I think it was quite worth the lie in.”

Bilbo flopped over, intending to give Thorin a piece of his mind, but thoughts were difficult to put in any kind of order when one was confronted with Thorin’s sleep-rosy cheeks and a tangled mess of black hair that Bilbo rather wanted to bury his fingers in. “Quite.” He croaked.

Had Bilbo been wearing any clothes under these covers, Thorin’s smile would have peeled them right back off. “I should warn you,” Bilbo squeaked out before Thorin could finish leaning in for a kiss. (Yes, Bilbo was not nearly as brave in the bright light of morning as he was in the warm candlelight of night, but he really did have things to say.) “I’m surprised my cousin hasn’t dropped by already to check on me.”

“And I have commissions waiting for me at my forge. Yet, I would rather be here.”

“It’s not a matter of rather.”

“No?”

Bilbo brushed his fingers through the scruff of Thorin’s beard and shuddered at the memory of its feel. “I’d _rather_ feed you elevenses right here in this bed before we get back to any other… activities. You’re so skinny that I’m worried you’re going expire midway through, and that’s a story I’d rather not have told about me.”

“I’m too _skinny_?”

“Look at you! You’re all muscle and bone!” Bilbo poked the Dwarf’s well-defined pectoral, then got distracted running a hand through the thick fur. (Hobbits didn’t have chest hair and Bilbo was perilously close to labelling it his second-favorite kind of hair, second only to the beard.)

“Muscle. and. bone.”

Thorin looked baffled. Bilbo was worried he might have said something offensive to Dwarven sensibilities, but Thorin just used those muscles to drag Bilbo close and chortle in his hair.

Naked elevenses sounded like the perfect way to begin the day – perhaps followed by a break for clothed luncheon since that meal tended to involve more knives.

But fate had already displayed a lifetime’s worth of kindness by putting Thorin in Bilbo’s path and she was unwilling to offer them more. The door to Bilbo’s room chose that moment to shudder as Adalgrim tried to walk straight through it without stopping to notice it was locked. “Bilbo?” The doorknob jiggled. “Bilbo, are you all right in there?”

Thorin sighed against Bilbo’s hair. “Your cousin didn’t expect your door to be locked?”

“We’re Hobbits,” Bilbo hissed under his breath. “Hobbits don’t lock their doors.”

“Bilbo!” Adalgrim panicked and started shaking the door as much as his not-at-all-muscle-and-bone body could manage. Bilbo slipped from bed and threw on his shirt, only realizing as he flicked the lock that he didn’t own anything that particular color of dark blue and all his clothes fit well enough that the shirt shouldn’t be slipping off his shoulder.

Bilbo opened the door just enough that his body took up all the empty space and the bed wouldn’t be visible. “Good morning, Adalgrim.”

“Are you all right? Why did you lock your door?”

Bilbo braced a foot against the inside of the door to keep Adalgrim from storming in. “We’re in Bree, Grim. You don’t leave your door unlocked in Bree.”

“Really?”

“Really. Has grandfather not given you the lecture about how to behave in the cities of Men?”

“But you said Bree doesn’t really count as a city!”

“Anything outside of the Shire counts as a city for Hobbits.”

“Point,” Adalgrim sighed. “Are you all right? You didn’t come down for breakfasts.”

“I was sleeping, Grim.”

“So late?”

“I was tired.” Which was precisely the wrong thing to say because any Hobbit who could sleep through meals was not feeling well.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” Adalgim asked tentatively, obviously about three seconds away from dragging Bilbo to a healer.

“No, Grim. I just needed a good lie in.” Before Adalgrim could ask about coming in and Bilbo had to devise a halfway decent lie, he said he’d be down for elevenses in a few minutes and shut the door in Adalgrim’s face.

“Bilbo!” Adalgrim shrieked and started knocking like Bilbo couldn’t hear the other Hobbit’s voice. Bilbo sighed and gave a long look back at Thorin, who was propped up on an elbow with sheets piled only to his waist. Muscle and bone really was more appealing than it ought to be.

Bilbo ripped the door open and his scowl had Adalgrim stumbling back. “Yes, cousin?”

“I know you’re coming down anyway but… Grandfather called us home.”

And there went sending Adalgrim off on business while Bilbo took Thorin back to bed. “Whatever for?”

“I’d like to say there’s some pressing family business, but I think…”

“You think he just wants me home.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised he managed three whole days without you. I told him in yesterday’s letter that you were doing just fine, but it seems he doesn’t believe me.”

“And mercy forbid he come to Bree to check on us.”

Adalgrim snorted. “Why go visit your relatives when you can summon them instead?”

“That is grandfather’s way.”

“I’m sorry, Bil. You look… rested, and I don’t want to ruin that. But, grandfather.”

“But grandfather, indeed.”

Bilbo gave Adalgrim a smile then shut the door and turned back to bed. He was halfway back onto the mattress and into Thorin’s arms when knocking interrupted yet again.

It took all Bilbo’s willpower not to fling the door open and let his cousin see precisely why Bilbo was ‘rested’ and what he was interrupting. “What?”

Adalgrim all but lunged through the door and gave Bilbo a clinging hug. “I’m so happy you’re feeling better.” Adalgrim scampered off down the stairs, never noticing the clear view of a half-naked Dwarf.

“You must away.”

Bilbo shrugged off Thorin’s shirt and crawled back into bed. “I’d like to stay here for the rest of the day, but if I’m not downstairs eating a Hobbit-sized breakfast soon, Grim will be back up here panicking. Which will be nothing compared to the panicking that grandfather will do if we’re not home in time for a late supper. Frankly, we’ll be lucky if we don’t run into family along the road, all of them out making sure we’re on the way home.”

“I assume he’s your mother’s father?”

Bilbo settled in over Thorin’s chest and let the Dwarf’s heat sink in. “Yes. I know he’s just doing it out of love since he doesn’t want to lose the last bit of his daughter he has left, but…”

“It’s hard for you to grieve as you’d like when you’re consoling him in his.”

“Yes.” Bilbo sighed the word in relief that Thorin understood without Bilbo having to put it into words. “I feel like a terrible person for it.”

“You shouldn’t. Especially since I don’t think anyone could blame you for choosing to stay in bed with me, yet you’re going to scamper back to the Shire.”

“You could come with me.”

“Ignoring that you bringing home a Dwarf would likely do worse things to your grandfather’s heart than his grief, I’m afraid I actually do have commissions that I need to see done. It’s not in me to leave any job incomplete, but especially not when it will keep my family fed.”

Bilbo didn’t realize how much he meant the request until the words left his lips. He didn’t begrudge Thorin his refusal since the Dwarf had replied in the same teasing, truthful tone. Bilbo twisted in Thorin’s arms, pressing back to front because he couldn’t stand the thought of even catching Thorin’s expression out of the corner of his eye. “You know…” he trailed off as he picked up one of Thorin’s thick hands, tracing the interesting callouses that Thorin had dragged across Bilbo’s skin.

“What ought I know?”

Life was short, and Bilbo wanted to know these hands better. “There are many people in the Shire. We’ve got our Hobbitish blacksmiths, but I’ve been told that there’s no one who could ever be as good as a Dwarf. And we Hobbits, we like our wooden crafts, make no mistake. But one can never have enough gardening tools.”

Thorin forced his hand to stay loose in Bilbo’s fingers, but that didn’t conceal the stutter of his breath. Bilbo was mortified, but he needed Thorin to understand. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be as exciting as the commissions you get from Men, certainly no weapons, and making a rake can’t be as interesting as a sword, but they would still… they would be…”

With the hand not stilling Bilbo’s shakes, Thorin twisted Bilbo’s head back for a kiss that found the Hobbit rolled underneath him, cradled in thick Dwarven arms that already felt like home. “I have to finish my commissions here. I gave my word. And then I must get the money back to my family in Ered Luin. But then, I will come to your Shire. Even if there’s no work for me there, I will still come.”

“Why wouldn’t there be?”

“I meant that my reason for coming is not the _work_ , Bilbo. Though I’ve known Dwarves who tried to sell their wares in the Shire, but your people aren’t terribly fond of strangers.”

Bilbo reared up, nearly crashing his forehead into Thorin’s nose. “You will when I’m the one telling them how good your work is!”

“How do you know I do good work?”

“You must. You’re turning down a morning in bed to do it.”

Thorin laughed and rolled back on top of Bilbo to smother him in kisses. Bilbo just kept talking. “You’ll come to Hobbiton. My smial is on top of the hill, across the lake from the Green Dragon. The one at the very top with the green door. I’ll introduce you to my neighbors and before the day is out, you’ll have more commissions than you can shake a stick at. They’ll be for little things, but they’ll be there.”

“Bilbo.” Thorin pressed a kiss to his lips to quiet him. “I believe you. But even without, I would come anyway.”

“I believe you.”

Thorin pressed a final kiss to the bulb of Bilbo’s nose. Then another final kiss to his soft cheeks, then to his laughing eyebrows, just so they didn’t feel left out. “Your cousin will be back.”

Bilbo groaned and flopped back to the mattress, letting Thorin go. “My grandfather turning up mid-kiss is the stuff of tween nightmares.”

“Shall I leave so you can make it out the door?”

“Don’t you dare. I’ve got the tiniest amount of time with you. I won’t lose a second of it.”

They slipped from bed and dressed one another with slow, sure hands that knew each other better than they should after only one night. Packing Bilbo’s few things back into his rucksack was simple, and soon they were walking down the stairs hand in hand, Bilbo’s pack slung over Thorin’s shoulder.

Just outside the dining room, Thorin handed over the bag and tugged Bilbo in by the straps to give him one last kiss. It was sweet and short, a promise of what was to come. Thorin stepped back into the inn’s main room with his eyes on Bilbo, then turned with all the force of a breaking bone and disappeared into the crowd. Bilbo darted forward to stop him, to say his grandfather could wait and he’d stay in Bree until Thorin’s work was done, but Thorin had already left the dining room and was out the door. If it wasn’t for the tingle of his lips, Bilbo would’ve thought the whole thing was a dream.

As it was, Adalgrim called from a table where he had elvenses tucked in a sandwich so they could leave directly. Bilbo loosened and re-tightened the straps on his pack and started planning. He had gossip to sow around the Shire that perhaps they needed a blacksmith, a list of things Thorin could start on at Bag End right away, and room in his home to make fit for a Dwarf.

He also needed to brace himself for Adalgrim’s smugness. He’d be unbearable when he realized he’d been right: all Bilbo had needed was something that was _his_.

**Author's Note:**

> Done for the 2021 Prompt Calendar January prompt where "Thorin is working in Bree the first time he meets the Baggins of Bag End."


End file.
